The Lake Wedding
The Lake Wedding
Ruthie’s POV
The early day’s sun is a soft gold, giving the lake a brush of quiet perfection. It looks like something from a postcard-too serene, too stunning, too motionless. And it still doesn’t seem real that this is my wedding day. After everything—my heartbreak, the nights I spent crying over Eliot’s disappearance, the chaos with Aiden, the murders on the news—I’ve finally made it. In a white lace dress standing beside the man who came back for me. Eliot is looking impossibly perfect in a charcoal suit.
His dark hair is slicked back, he’s smiling but distant, just like he always is when he’s thinking too much. He reaches out and takes my hand. “You look beautiful, Ruth.” He reached out and took my hand.
I smile, a little shy, a little nervous. “You’ve said that three times already.” “And it’s still true,” he says softly as thumb brushes over my fingers.
“You’re everything I’ve ever wanted.” I want to believe that. I really do. Soften>Your News The priest?clears his throat gently, withdrawing a small, leather-bound Bible. “Shall we begin?” There’s no one else here no maids of honor, no guests, no music.
Just us, the officiant, and the vast stillness of the lake behind us. I had wanted Aiden to come, if only to stand at the back, but Eliot said it wouldn’t be right. “It's our day,” he’d told me last night. “Our promise. No one else has the right to interfere, certainly not Aiden. He's just a friend not your father.”
When I put up a fuss, he gave me a smile and uttered it so softly that I felt bad for arguing. “You and Aiden … you have history together. But that’s over now. It’s time to make our own.”
And I’d nodded. Stupid me
The priest’s voice cuts through the silence. “Do you, Ruth Betsy August , take Eliot Raines to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, to your true love until death do you part?”
I smile through tears. “I do.”
The priest turns. “And do you, Eliot Raines, take Ruth Betsy August to be your lawfully wedded wife?”
Eliot gazes at me—really gazes at me—and something flickers in his eyes. For a moment, it’s not love. It’s something else.
Something unreadable .
Then it’s gone.
“I do,” he says, voice steady.
The priest smiles warmly. “By the authority vested in me as an officiant of the State of New York, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
He closes the book. “You may kiss the bride!”
Eliot steps closer. With his hands on my face, his thumbs lightly sweeping over the corners of my lips. It’s soft at first, then deeper, more frantic, desperate—like he’s trying to claim me, seal something imperceptible between us.
When we finally pull apart, I’m breathless.
The priest congratulates us, a brief, polite smile, and silently begins to pack up. Eliot slips him an envelope—payment, I guess—then the man retreats, his footsteps melting into the dirt path, and it’s just the two of us. “He was concerned when I told him he can't…”
I stop talking, not wanting to dredge up the past.
He sighs, running his hand down my arm as if soothing a fidgety child. “I know. It isn't a must family and friends would come to your wedding. This place is ours.The future is ours, baby.”
I nod slowly. “Okay.I just thought he’d be happy for us.”
He turns toward the lake, staring at the dark, still center of the water. “People aren’t happy when they find out that you are happy without them. They want to drag you back to who you used to be, not who you are now.”
Just the way he says it and I get goosebumps, but can’t tell you why.
We head down to the water, our shoes crunching on the gravel. My dress is flapping in the wind from behind me, the edge is wet where it touches the lake. Eliot bends, scoops up a polished stone, and flicks it on the water. It bounces twice before going under.
“I used to come here when I was a kid,” he says quietly. “My aunt took me when things got rough at home. Said the water hears better than the people do.”
I faintly smile. “Is that part of the reason you love it here.”
He looks away, his eyes distant. “The water knows all. You can unload all your secrets to it, and it never judges. They only keep them.
There was something about his tone, the possessive darkness, that made me shiver.
“Secrets ?” I say. He turns to me, grinning, though the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “We all have them, don’t we? They’re little things we hide.”
I laugh nervously. “Well, mine aren’t that interesting. I’m pretty much an open book.”
“Yours are pure,” says he, tucking a stray hair behind my ears.
His fingers rest on my skin still cold from the wind. “That’s why I love you.” You don’t hide. You don’t play games. You just… trust.”
His words are soft, but still sound like a question. Like he’s searching, Making sure I’m still the person he thinks I is.
I do trust you,” I whisper. “Than anyone.”
He slowly nods, his eyes gleaming like the water behind him. “Well, that’s all that matters. You trust me and I protect you.”
We hold this moment for a long moment, wind wrapping us in invisible tendrils. He leans down and kisses my temple, this time gentler, almost reverent.
Then he whispers, “You will never have to worry about anything ever again. I ”ll take care of everything.”
“Eliot…”
“I mean it,” he says firmly. “Nobody’s ever going to harm you. No one is going to take you away.”
The air seems thicker.
I try to smile, try to steady the knots in my stomach. “You’re making it sound like we’re running from something.”
He looks out at the lake once more, his reflection disturbed by ripples. “Every now and again, love is only a promise to hold on—not matter what the world tells you to do.”
I don’t know what I should tell them.
When the sun begins to route in the late afternoon, he sheds his jacket and places it on the dirt for us to take a seat. The cool breeze, the sky, orange and violet bleeding.He pulls me close again,
“Do you ever think about forever?” he asks quietly.
“Sure does,” I say. “Who doesn’t?”
“Forever is what most people think time is,” he murmurs. “But it’s not. It’s not years or decades. It’s a feeling. It’s a connection that doesn’t snap even if everything else snaps.” He trails his thumb around my fresh, modest gold band. “It’s being so wrapped up with someone that if you tried to find where you end and where they start, you wouldn’t be able to.”
I look at him and see the lake light twinkling in his eyes. “That’s beautiful.”
He smiles faintly. “Do you believe in that kind of forever?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
He turns to me, his face expressionless. “Good.”
He reaches for my hand and brings it to his lips. “Because I do too.”
There is something about the way he says it that makes my heart skip a beat. It doesn’t sound like a promise, it sounds like a sentence. For a second, that image of those “murders on the news” flickers in my mind – unsolved, messy, dark. I disassociate from it, I’m scared from the link that my brain just attempted to make. For just a second, the noise around us all seems to be muted—the birds, the wind, even the gentle lapping of the lake. As though the world is exhaling in pause.
And then, at that moment, I don’t know if I’m the luckiest woman on the planet — or the biggest fool. When we at last get up to leave, the sky has gone dark blue, like a new bruise.
Eliot holds my hand tightly, well, almost too tightly as we walk back to the car. His fingers laced with mine, his hold feels less like affection and more like possession.
I take one last look behind at the lake, dimly lit by the moonlight. The water seems to go on forever, beneath us. Like it’s waiting.
And for the briefest second, I think I see something float—something pale—just beneath the surface. A patch of white, like fabric or skin, bobbing gently before the current pulls it under.
But when I blink, it’s gone. Only manifestation of a cloud .
"Ruth?" Eliot calls softly as he opens the passenger door for me. He is already there, waiting, his shadow stretched out long in the twilight.
“Coming,” I say, with a practiced smile, my throat drying suddenly.
As I settle into the seat, I feel his gaze on me—warm, hungry to adore, and just a little bit too intense. He smells like pine and lake air.
He shuts the door softly, bows, then murmurs “Forever starts now” through the window.
Then he kisses me on the forehead, climbs into the car, and drives us away from the lake. I shiver, cold and sharp as it goings down
my back.
Behind us, the water ripples once more – but there is no wind.